Romantic

Tyson - our hopeless night owl who cannot stop chasing the sun, even if his life depended on it; and all too often, it does - is a romantic at heart.

With his confusingly big heart, Tyson loves and loves in a dozen different ways at once, but when it comes to romantic love, his taste is rather self-destructive; though certainly not through any jealous behaviour.

He makes personalised gift boxes for general gift giving, so it’s hardly surprising that when it comes to romantic gestures, Tyson will pull out all the stops.

Examples of this, from interactions with @gamblingtigersniper & @blackvclvct, are:

• Valentines Day Submission 2014
• Sebastian’s Birthday Submission 2015
• A [giant] teddy bear for Sebastian
• Jim and Tyson’s birthday 2016 [1930s]
• Jim and Tyson’s birthday 2017

More generally, when Tyson is in romantic relationships, he likes to be playful. He struggles to accept the happiness of being close to someone, and happiness in general, but he is loyal to a fault and he will do anything to make the people he cares about happy.

Family Tree

Even though Tyson tried to run away from the family legacy, he is incredibly proud of it; that a prominently Jewish family managed to preserver for so long.

The Delaney family have been teaching at Cambridge almost since the university was founded in 1209. However, for the moment*, the Delaney family tree can seen going back to 1615 in the miscellaneous navigation, under the page tree.

The family tree can be viewed in a dozen ways, but the recommended settings for ease of navigation would be: No photos, Parents: 5, Children: 5, Others: 5, and either Life Dates or Profession.

Points of interest within the Delaney family tree:

• The (relevants part of) the family trees for Rosie Delaney, Colonel Sebastian Moran, and Kimiko Bùi.
• The history of the two brothers that Tyson’s brother (Jethro Andrew Delaney) is named after: Jethro Delaney and Andrew Jeremy Delaney.
  • This is also the point where the adopted Indian branch of Tyson’s family comes in and the Poppy Roll bakery is founded.
• The longstanding family friendship with the Murdock’s, which eventually leads to Tyson’s Godson Carver.
• The scandalising tale of Alice Delaney and the founding of the Taste of Tangerine private girls’ club.
• The Romani/Jewish branch of the family that came from Central Europe.
• The average life span for those born with the surname Delaney has been 56.2 years, and approximately 27% of those born Delaney have been female.
• The Polish part that fled Europe with Tyson’s grandmother during the war and Anne Samantha Willaim’s family, who’s farm took in Lily’s puppies.
• The maiden names of everyone who married into the family can be seen. More specifically, they can be seen as Jewish surnamed. The Delaeny family is Jewish. Ethnically and religiously at every branch of the tree.
  • A noteable exception is Clark Delaney who converted to Christianity for his wife and was, more or less, blacklisted by the family.
  • His grandson - Lord Jackson Delaney, born Jackson Partridge - converted back to Judaism and was welcomed back into the family.
• Miriam Delaney who sold off the majority of the Delaney family land to help local farmers, reducing the manor’s grounds to their current size.
• The bloodthristy mercenary who was cut down by his brother-in-law and the secrecty female soldier who reached the rank of Corporal.

* Tyson’s family tree will be periodically updated as new members join his family, as people die, and going back further into history inevitably.

However, crafting the relevant parts of his history around events that would have been happening at the time is a long process and the headcanon marathon must go on.

Third Wheel

Though not an issue within Tyson’s main universe, he doesn’t get upset by the idea of Moran and Moriarty being together. He encourages it.

There are several reasons for this. Tyson is poly and openly admits to loving both Sebastian and Jim, he isn’t someone who gets jealous, and he is overjoyed by the idea of having someone else around to encourage them to actually take care of themselves.

As stubborn as Tyson can be, he can only dig in his heels so much when it comes to Moran and Moriarty. He wants them to be the best that they can be, the happiest and healthiest. If being together made Moran and Moriarty happy, Tyson would do anything in his power to keep them together.

Yes, Tyson would be overjoyed to be a part of that relationship, but equally, Tyson would be content on the sidelines and know that the people he loves are happy together.

Luck

Though Tyson doesn’t believe in luck over the truth of probability and chance, he likes to use luck as a measuring stick for how probability has appeared. It is purely probability, purely random chance, how the events came to be, but Tyson finds it easier to quantify how the odds appear as lucky or unlucky rolls.

He doesn’t allow that luck to change the value he assigns to different scenarios, especially when making plans for the web, but Tyson can keep score more efficiently that way. It also makes certain concepts easier for Tyson to express to other people rather than throwing out the mathematical version.

The exception to that rule comes from gamblers, who Tyson would instead default on presenting the information as a clear betting odds rather than automatically presenting concepts of luck as Tyson knows that gamblers have a tendency to be superstitious about luck and he respects superstitions.

Ice-Skating

Though Tyson generally has poor balance and doesn’t tend to make large open gestures, he takes to ice-skating like a natural with now controlled his arm movements generally are.

He dislikes skating around other people, his anxiety going into overdrive with the possibilities of taking a blade to his throat, but when the ice is quite, Tyson genuinely loves to ice-skate.

It’s an indulgence that Tyson rarely allows himself when he isn’t babysitting his nephew James or dragging Dick out of his apartment to get some exercise.

Tyson has his own set of ice-skates that, like everything else in his apartment, is stored away under his bed in one of the many boxes that are only dragged out on special occasions.

Assumptions

Given how much effort Tyson puts into making sure that others gain a false implication about who he is, Tyson is surprisingly quick to latch onto preconceived assumptions about people based on the words of other people.

Tyson trusts his gut to make a call about that person if the situation arises and Tyson is willing to change his view when necessary, but Tyson hasn’t survived so long by ignoring the information handed to him.

He tends to put more faith in an assertion of strength than weakness. Tyson knows from experience that its easier to appear weaker and less intelligent than one than to achieve the reverse.

If web contacts tell Tyson that someone isn’t dangerous, Tyson’s hackles immediately raise, but Tyson will generally accept the assessment of someone being dangerous.

Autistic Tendencies

Though Tyson is not autistic, it would be easy to misdiagnose the many symptoms he presents from other conditions as Tyson being on the autistic spectrum.

Tyson’s teacher for nursery and reception was certainly under that assumption, due to Tyson’s ‘hyper fixation’ on maps, even going so far as to draw maps over everything he had already drawn. This was instead from Tyson’s form of Synesthesia and his attempts to understand, as well as simply drawing the maps he saw over people and objects.

However, as a child, Tyson didn’t have the awareness to explain that to his teacher or to understand why she was giving him extra attention over his classmates. Though it was ultimately unnecessary, Tyson does look back and appreciate everything that teacher did to help him.

Another way that Tyson can be misinterpreted as autistic is his tendency to ‘pressure stim’. He feels most comfortable when he has pressure and weight against his skin. This shows as almost always wearing multiple layers, regardless of how hot he is.

He can sleep whenever and wherever he needs to, but Tyson feels safest sleeping with his duvet wrapped around him. Even if that means that he melts in the summer.

Fruit

‘Fruit’ is the description Tyson typically falls back on when denying his homosexuality.

The logic being this is typically Tyson. Plausible deniability in case anyone calls him out on his attraction to men.

Fruit typically refers to a male homosexual, which technically isn’t Tyson’s orientation as he is romantically bi. He isn’t any more inclined to admit that to anyone, but that does mean that when he says “I’m not a fruit” he isn’t lying.

If there is anyone that Tyson can lie to, it’s himself.

Noire

Tyson has a soft spot in his head for the spy/detective genres as a whole, but especially Noire.

The concept of ‘It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it’ appeals strongly to Tyson in his current line of work. Even - and perhaps especially - the parts that he is good at, Tyson hates the work he does for the Moriarty Mirrors and he’s never hidden that, but he will keep doing it for them untiringly.

The bittersweet sentiment that even when everything is horrible, grim and dark, there is still hope. Still a silver lining and a reason to keep marching forward. The idea that, however slim it may be, that silver lining is worth fighting for is a great comfort to Tyson.

He finds noire to be incredibly cathartic. He is trying to do as much good as possible, by minimising collateral damage and redirecting the crosshairs into better places. Tyson doesn’t think that makes him a good person, but he’s trying his best and, when he can’t find a silver lining, forging them himself.

That counts for something. His battle might be in vain, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a fight work taking.

Childhood Toys

As a child Tyson had a Grumpy Bear stuffed toy, until Tyson’s father forced him to give it away - along with other toys - when he was twelve. Tyson’s Kipper the Dog stuffed toy was also taken and the Superman action figure that Jethro had gotten Tyson for his tenth birthday.

It was one of the few times that his father decided to jointly punish them for something one had done. Jethro had lashed out publicly at one of the Professors attending a dinner party hosted at the family manor, condemning Christianity for its treatment of the Jewish people in a less than delicate way.

Even as a child Tyson understood why his father had reacted so strongly, but he also knew that it didn’t justify this father’s decision. Tyson keenly understood the kind of danger that could put their family in. It wasn’t the right choice, not even close, but he understands that John acted out of fear.

Predictably, Tyson was allowed to keep his chess, draughts, and backgammon sets. He was also permitted to keep two sets of playing cards and the Rubik’s Cube, but all other games were taken away. The broken slinky and a rather dented hula hoop weren’t exactly losses.

Given how many times Jethro had almost broken something with them, Tyson was honestly surprised that it had taken so long for the Devil’s Sticks to get confiscated. The Diabolo that had come with the same set was saved by virtue of being in their attic hiding place when the purge occurred.

Tyson managed to make a good argument for various balls as practising hand-eye coordination for his various lessons, but that still reduced them down to only one ball of each type; which somewhat defeated the point of the juggling balls. His fencing equipment was left untouched, but various toy swords were taken away.

He honestly can’t remember what argument that made that caused him to keep his skateboard, but he knows that the bike was kept as a way of letting Tyson get to and from school. The scooter was rarely used and had become too small anyway, but Tyson was sad to see the roller-blades go.

It was that moment that caused Tyson and Jethro to move their more valued personal items up into the attic permanently, just in case one of them managed to anger their father that much again.

Pup's Pet Store

Though he rarely bothers to open the shop, Tyson does own Pup’s Pet Store; named by his nephew. It’s largely a cover story to convince his brother that Tyson does have a normal life and it can help cover his activities within the web if he gains too much police attention.

His sister-in-law, Rosie, designed the business cards for the store, so that receipts or any other papers from the shop could be slotted inside. She was also the one to create the forms for Tyson’s shop and maps. Rosie has since made an updated and larger range for him, so that Tyson can make his business look legitimate under scrutiny.

As well as selling pet supplies, Tyson offers a service where he helps people track down their ideal pet from the various shelters and breeders around London, and he will occasionally offer training if he likes the person enough.

He has a …deal of sorts with Jeremy, the owner of the butcher’s shop two doors down from Tyson’s pet shop. Tyson buys his meat there and recommends it to other people, and in turn Jeremy offers him a safe place to hide whilst making unsubtle comments about favours that Tyson might owe him.

The top floor of Tyson’s pet store is largely used as a place for Tyson to make his maps, as Tyson’s apartment lacks floor space to work on them and he keeps most of his supplies at the store. That isn’t to say that Tyson has a lot of space at his store either.

As the majority of the upper floor is often covered in drying maps, Tyson has a pair of long wooden planks and four rubber bricks to walk around the room without disrupting anything; and, naturally, has trained his dogs to walk over them too. Lily and Bobby will sometimes hop onto the planks even when nothing else is on the floor.

Tyson can pivot around the maps and sometimes when he’s working on too many at once, he will move the planks out of the way to free up more floor space, but he honestly finds it fun to balance on the blanks and it helps prevent any accidents from happening.

Weather

Tyson’s favourite type of weather is coincidentally one of his favourite phrases in Hebrew: שמש חולה (Shemesh Khola : sick sun), or שמש שקרנית (Shemesh Shakranit : lying sun), the weather when the sun is out, yet the atmosphere is cold.

Rain holds less affection in Tyson’s heart. The constant, dismal onslaught of rain from the British weather takes away a lot of the joy rainfall can bring, but even so, he appreciates the mathematical challenge that rain can give. He knows the formulae for predicting where each raindrop will fall. His view on rain does improve once he’s inside, however.

He hates bright sunlight, though he doesn’t need his sunglasses anywhere near as much as he pretends to. He is generally happier after he has been exposed to bright sunlight and his eyes shift to green, however. Or, rather, Tyson is happier when he actually gets any degree of sunlight instead of hiding inside.

His phobia of thunder and lightning is well-documented at this point. The hypersensitive dent in his torso and the dog bite scar on his shoulder react badly to the cold, but Tyson honestly loves how London looks covered in snow. He likes winter more than he’s willing to admit, though Autumn will always be his favourite.

Hot weather is his bane. He has too many bad memories surround hot places to tolerate it. Though thunder and lightning will get to him, Tyson’s memories of Sebastian’s assault in the monsoon don’t pass onto storms quite as strongly. Storms - and strong winds in general - put Tyson on edge, but they don’t provoke such a visceral reaction.

After so long serving in the army and surviving on his own, Tyson is good at guessing the weather. He can certainly always feel cold weather coming in the left side of his torso.

Loyalty

Loyalty is Tyson’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

He is, quite literally, loyal to a fault. It will be his downfall.

Though he will continue to give until his confusingly big heart has nothing left to give, Tyson does not trust easily. He expects to get hurt and gives anyway. That in and of itself makes him vulnerable to manipulation.

What makes him more vulnerable is that once his trust is gained, it is near impossible to break his loyalty. His trust may be broken, but Tyson will still come when called and follow that person’s moral code as though it were his own. He will go to any length for those that he is loyal to.

The worst part is that Tyson knows this. Our little Icarus knows that he’s going to burn himself up, and does it gladly, because - to him - it is entirely worth whatever pain may come to bask in the sun; whether that is The Colonel or the Moriarty Mirrors, Tyson will gladly take that leap of faith every time.

Tyson would never believe for even a second that his loyalty isn’t a strength. He is glad that he cares, glad to plant his feet and hold fast in his ideals, but that doesn’t mean that Tyson is naïve about the way it causes him to expose his throat.

His loyalty is a strength. It makes his dependable. A good friend. Valuable to keep around. No matter how far he wanders, Tyson will always come home; just as loyal and dedicated as when he left. This earns his more freedom, in his utter obedience; if one chooses to ignore all the ways that he is disobedient.

The Moriarty Mirrors can tell Tyson with complete sincerity that ‘he is free to leave at any time’, because he never will. And they all know it. There is no danger in allowing Tyson to remove his leash. He will always come back. He will not betray them.

If Sebastian had shown that trust, things would have ended up differently.

That knowledge means that Tyson can be trusted to do as he likes. He isn’t chomping at the bit to rebel or waiting for an opportunity to run. He doesn’t need to be reminded of his place. Tyson knows it. He chose to be there. He is content there.

One day, his loyalty to dangerous, amoral people will get him killed.

It will be his downfall and Tyson is okay with that. Genuinely. He welcomes it.

Attraction

Though Tyson ends up tripping over himself about how pretty everyone is, there is a bias in the type of people Tyson is attracted to physically.

As mentioned in this thread, Tyson’s attraction outside of physicality is… poor.

“If you think that’s bad, you should see my taste in women,” was the flippant reply offered. Given his history with The Colonel and Moriarty, that shouldn’t have been as true as it actually was. Though, it still wasn’t an entirely fair assessment. Fewer women had actually hurt him, but a broader range of attraction to men meant more were decent people; the law of averages more than a conscientious effort on Tyson’s part.

He is a moth to a flame and cannot leave a mystery well enough alone. Tyson knows that he is generally attracted to men and women that could break him, but he isn’t particularly inclined to do anything about that. He embraces that part of him. A calculated risk, balancing how happy those people make him versus the danger.

Crab Fishing

When Tyson takes his nephew to the beach, they make the time to go crab fishing.

Though Tyson is rather lukewarm on the topic of fishing, preferring to meditate to clear his mind, James enjoys catching crabs and Tyson enjoys getting to sit quietly on the pier with Lily; whilst Bobby paddles around in the water, theoretically chasing crabs towards James.

It began as a way to keep James occupied and under the dog’s watchful eyes, whilst Tyson ‘discouraged’ some unwanted attention from enemies of the web.

Tyson can’t even remember what excuse he gave when he returned with busted knuckles, only that James didn’t believe it and decided to accept that answer anyway.

Deceiving an eight-year-old shouldn’t make fish and chips taste better.

Jewish

Tyson is a non-observant Jew religiously and ethnically Jewish too, specifically  Ashkenazi.

Though he is largely non-observant in his religious practices, his Jewishness is incredibly important to Tyson. He will defend it no matter what. Tyson is proud to be Jewish. He is proud of the Jewish people. His people.

It cannot be overstated how much the Delaney family legacy matters to Tyson. That as a prominently, proudly Jewish family, the Delaney family managed to forge a legacy of their own around and alongside Cambridge almost since the university was founded.

It also cannot be overstated how guilty Tyson feels for having abandoned that legacy. He would never force his nephew to walk their ‘intended’ path, but it warms his heart that James is so interested in their family history and wants to carry it on. To earn his place in Cambridge and continued their legacy.

The sharper, clipped edges of the consonants in his usual broad, yet posh, Cambridge accent is led by considering Hebrew to be his first language. He could speak in Hebrew long before English. Tyson does wish he knew more Yiddish, however.

Though Tyson isn’t secretive about his Judaism, he can be somewhat protective about sharing it with other people. Defensive. Tyson would typically call non-Jewish people ‘gentiles’, but if he even perseveres someone to be attacking Judaism, they become ‘goyim’ and nothing else.

It is one of the few areas that Tyson has a hard unyielding line about defending.

Tyson’s belief in Judaism and Adonai wavers, but his belief in the Jewish people never wavers. That kinship, that family, is far more important to him than anything else. That isn’t to say the other parts do not matter, simply that he places more importance on the enduring future of his people, on their continued questioning and celebration.

He struggles to define exactly what he believes, as it ebbs and flows as time goes on. Tyson cannot say that he believes in Adonai; he wants to believe in Adonai, but he isn’t sure that it is the same thing. It’s a similar place to his thoughts on superstition: belief in it has power, even if the thing itself does not exist.

Mathematics, the hidden language wrapped loving through all of reality, actually helps Tyson’s belief. ‘Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of God.’ He doesn’t think that it’s proof of Adonai, per say, but it brings him comfort in a way that he cannot untangle from his Jewishness.

Tyson does not know if prayer achieves anything, but he would never dismiss someone’s prayers or blessings; regardless of religion. He will always offer prayers of his own if he thinks it would comfort another. Sometimes it feels like lip service to Tyson, a duty to fulfil, and at other times, Tyson genuinely feels better if he prays.

Holidays, in general, do not matter to Tyson. However, he does join Jethro, Rosie, & James for Chanukah - where they have developed their own tradition around Beyblades - and Tyson always observes Passover/Seder, and attends Synagogue as part of that.

Tyson has a large collection of kippahs with holes in them, where Tyson has been fiddling with them after removing them following attending Synagogue. He makes sure to attend some kind of service at least once a month, but Tyson does feel guilty about not attending more often.

With the exception of the times he decides to celebrate the high holidays, Tyson doesn’t bother keeping kosher outside of Sabbath; outside of Saturday more accurately. He struggles to eat properly enough without adding restrictions. However, sharing bread is incredibly important to Tyson.